Module 2: Managing Work Items in Rational Team Concert

Accelerating Product and Service Innovation
Course materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the prior written permission of IBM. 9.0
Developing Software with IBM Rational Team
Concert
Module 2: Managing Work Items in Rational Team
Concert
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2008, 2014

Unit objectives
After completing this unit, you should be able to:
• Describe the views that are associated with the Work Item
perspective
• Describe how work items relate to other IBM® Rational
Team Concert™ concepts
• Create work items
• Find work items
• Display work-item history
• Explain how to triage new work items
• Describe how to work on and resolve work items
• Configure your personal notifications

Work items and the Work Items perspective
> Work items and the Work Items perspective
Creating work items
Finding work items
Displaying work-item history
Triaging new work items
Working on and resolving work items
Configuring personal notifications
> = Current topic

Work items
Work items capture the planned work for a project.
Different types of work items capture different kinds of work:
 Defect: Identifies a bug
 Enhancement: Describes a requested new feature
 Task: Describes a specific piece of work
 Plan Item: Provides a high-level description of work that is targeted for
a specific iteration
 Story: Describes part of a use case
Typical work-item attributes:
 Workflows and status
 Properties and values
 Approvals
 Attachments

Additional work-item capabilities
Dynamically create relationships to other work items
 Establish parent-child relationships
 Specify dependencies
 Find duplicates
 Create references
Use work items to do these tasks:
 Associate work items with change sets.
 Allocate work items to plans and iterations.
 Estimate the effort that is required to resolve the work item.
 Provide metrics regarding project status.

The Work Items perspective and views
In the Work Items
perspective, you can
access and manage
your
work items. The
perspective
has these views:
 Team Artifacts
 My Work
 Team Dashboard
 Work Items

Team Artifacts view
This view is the central
access point for project
data.
The view is organized by
these folders:
 Your repository
connections
 Project and folder
hierarchies
 Your personal folders
– Feeds
– Repository workspaces
– Teams areas that you
are assigned to
– Work Item history

My Work view
Use this view to manage your work
items.
This view is organized by sections:
 Inbox lists newly assigned work.
 Current Work lists work items for the
current iteration.
 Future Work lists work for future
iterations.
Changes that you make in the My
Work view can directly impact work
items and your team’s plans.
You can customize this view by
clicking actions in the view menu:
Click the View Menu icon.

Team Dashboard view
This view is a central access point
for team communications and news.
The view is continuously updated.
The view includes these default
sections:
 My Open Work Items lists open work
items by Priority.
 Event Log displays information from
news feeds.
 Team Load shows workloads by
member.
 Build lists events for builds.
You can customize this view by
using the view menu.

Work Items view
This view displays work-item query results in a table.
Double-click a work item to open it in the Work Item editor.

Creating work items
 Work items and the Work Items perspective
> Creating work items
 Finding work items
 Displaying work-item history
 Triaging new work items
 Working on and resolving work items
 Configuring personal notifications
> = Current topic

Ways to create a work item
You create work items to submit a defect, task,
enhancement, or other type of work request for a
project.
You can create a work item in several ways:
 Click Work Items > New > Work Item.
 Duplicate another work item.
 Create a work item whose Summary field contains text that
you select from text in the Summary, Description, or
Discussion fields in the Work Item editor
 Take a screen capture and attach it to a new work item.
 Create a work item in the Build editor.

Creating a work item
1. Right-click the Work Items
folder, and then click New >
Work Item.
1. Right-click the Work Items
folder, and then click New >
Work Item.
2. Select the type of work item to
create, and then click Finish.
2. Select the type of work item to
create, and then click Finish.

Creating a work item (continued)
3. On the Overview tab of the new work
item, set the work item’s properties.
3. On the Overview tab of the new work
item, set the work item’s properties.

Creating a work item (continued)
5. Click Add File, select the file
to add, and then click Open.
4. To add an attachment to the
work item, click Links.
6. Click Save.

Use the Filed Against field to assign a work item category.
Categories group work items for your project by these areas:
 Components
 Functional areas
Each category is associated with a team area.
Work item categories

Finding work items
 Work items and the Work Items perspective
 Creating work items
> Finding work items
> = Current topic

Use queries to find work items
Queries are the primary
mechanism for finding work items.
Queries are stored in the Work
Items folder of the Team Artifacts
view:
 The My Queries folder stores your
private queries.
 The Shared Queries folder stores
predefined and individually shared
queries.

Finding work items that are assigned to you
Double-click the Open assigned to me query
to find work items that are assigned to you.
The results are in the Work Items view.
The number of items that are found
and the query name are displayed on
the title bar.

Creating a simple query
1. In the Team Artifacts
view, right-click the Work
Items folder, and then
click New > Query.
2. In the Work Item
Query editor, click
Simple Query.

Creating a simple query (continued)
Work-item properties are filtered in condition boxes.
For groups, click AND or OR. For condition boxes, select
other filters, such as Is or Is not.
To add more condition
boxes, click the plus sign
icon.
Click the menu to add
groups for User, Date,
or Text properties.

Creating a simple query (continued)
5. Click Run to run the query, or click Save
to store the query in your My Queries
folder.
4. Enter a name for the query.

Finding a specific work item
How can you find a specific
work item when you know
the work item ID, a phrase
from the work item
Summary, Description, or
Discussions property, or a
phrase that was in the work
item, but it is no longer
there?
Enter search information in the Quick
Search field. If a matching work item
is found, it is opened. If multiple work
items are found, the work items are
listed in the Work Items view.

Finding a specific work item (continued)
What if no matching work items are returned from a search?
Use the Jazz text search
feature:
1.Click Search > Jazz
Text…. In the
Containing text field,
enter the search text.
2.Select the kinds of
objects to include in the
search.
3.Click Search. The results
are displayed in the
Search view
with a score that indicates
how likely the work item
matches the search text.

Finding duplicate work items
The work item that you found seems a lot like
another work item.
Is it a duplicate?
In the Work Item editor, click the menu
icon that is next to the work item ID, and
then click Find Potential Duplicates.
The potential duplicate work items are
displayed in the Work Items view.
• The comment shows the number
of potential duplicates for the work
item in question.
• The Score column indicates the
probability that the work item is a
duplicate. You determine whether
the work item is a duplicate.

Exercises 2.1 - 2.3
Complete these tasks:
 Create a work item in the JKE Banking
(Change Management) project.
 Query work items in the JKE Banking
(Change Management) project.
 Add conditions to the query to limit its scope
and adjust how the results are sorted and
how
they are listed in the Work Items view.

Displaying work-item history
 Eclipse Work Items perspective and views
> Displaying work-item history
> = Current topic

Displaying work-item history
Jazz automatically maintains work-item histories:
 The history of changes to a specific work item
 The history of work items that you open
 The results of queries that you ran during the current session

The work item History tab
In the Work Item editor, the History tab shows
the complete history of changes.
• The history shows who made changes and
when. The most recent change is listed first.
• The calendar bar is segmented into weekly
sections and shows the timing of changes.
• Weeks that contain changes are highlighted
in blue.
• To see a summary of the changes that were
made during a week, click the week.

Your work item history
To see a history of the work items that you opened in the Work
Item editor, expand the Work Item History folder in the Team
Artifacts view.
These folders contain work items
that you opened before today.
This list includes the
work items that you
opened today.

Results of previously run queries

Triaging new work items
> Triaging new work items
> = Current topic

As a team member on a project, you must manage work items
that are assigned to you:
Inbox
 Recently assigned
work items that require triage:
– Priorities versus current work
– Estimate effort
Current Work
 Work items that are planned for completion in the current iteration
Future work
 Your personal “backlog”
 Work items that you have triaged and postponed for later development
My Work view: Triaging new work items

My Work view: Current Work
In the Current Work section, you manage work items
that are assigned to you in the current iteration.
Arrange the work items in order of planned completion.
The My Work Load indicator
displays this information:
Remaining time available
Hours in the iteration compared
to the estimated hours to complete
your unresolved work items
To adjust time values, right-click a work item, and then click
Show Work Time.

Go deeper than triage
 Read the work-item summary,
description, and discussion.
 Start a chat session with the
creator to resolve questions, or
enter a comment in the work item.
 If you are not the correct owner,
take action:
 Reassign the work item to another
user.
 Add a comment explaining why.
 Update the time estimate.

Working on and resolving work items
> Working on and resolving work items
> = Current topic

Work items must reflect real-time status
State the overall status of the work item.
Describe your work and progress.
When necessary, update the status information in
these areas:
 Overview tab
– Indicate the state of the work item
– Estimate the time to resolve the work item
– Participate in discussions
 Links tab
– Add an attachment or subscriber
– Add relationships to other work items
 Approvals tab: Identify who can approve the work item
 History tab: View the change history of the work item

Resolving a work item

Work item states
Work items evolve
from an initial state,
New, to a final state,
Closed.
Actions move the
work items between
the states.
This image shows a
typical workflow for
task-level work items.
Workflows are
customizable.

Configuring personal notifications
 Eclipse Work Items perspective and
views
> Configuring personal notifications
 Email notifications
 Pop-up alerts
 News feeds
> = Current topic

Email notification
Configure email on the Mail Configuration tab of the User editor.

Pop-up alerts
A pop-up alert is displayed in a small window and is hidden in a few seconds.
You configure alerts on the Preferences page: Click Window > Preferences.

News feeds
Jazz components report
on change events:
 Events are recorded in
the Jazz repository.
 The Jazz feed service
publishes a web feed.
News feeds are configured at
the project level.
Three default news feeds are
available:
 Build Events for My Teams
 My Work Item Changes
 My Teams in Project Area
Click an event to see more
information about it.

Unit summary
Having completed this unit, you should be able to:
• Describe the views that are associated with the Work Item
perspective
• Describe how work items relate to other IBM® Rational
Team Concert™ concepts
• Create work items
• Find work items
• Display work-item history
• Explain how to triage new work items
• Describe how to work on and resolve work items
• Configure your personal notifications

Exercises 2.4 - 2.5
Complete this task:
 Triage a work item for the Conversion project

Module 2: Managing Work Items in Rational Team Concert

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Editor's Notes